


Uncharacteristically

by johnny cade (johnnycake)



Series: Switchblades and Leather [29]
Category: The Outsiders (1983), The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sickness, sick, sick dallas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 18:47:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15467700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnycake/pseuds/johnny%20cade
Summary: Dallas never gets sick, but when he does it hits him hard.





	Uncharacteristically

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> yay!! a request!! i hope this is good and the person who requests it likes it ;-;

Dally never got sick. In fact, he couldn’t even remember the last time he had been sick. He thought it might’ve been when he was a kid, but even then he wasn’t sure if he was remembering himself being sick or someone else. In any case, he hadn’t been sick since, so when he woke up one morning with a pounding head and feeling nauseous, he thought it was just because he woke up early. However, when the feeling didn’t go away for the next few days and he started coughing stuff up _and_ had a high fever, he figured it probably had to be more than that.

He spent those first few days lying on his couch, staring at the TV, changing the channel when whatever was on got too boring. The TV only had four or five channels, so he didn’t have very many choices and, after three days of lying in his house doing nothing, he got bored of that. He knew it probably wasn’t a very good idea to go out while he was sick, but through his fever and delirium, he didn’t really care all that much. And once he staggered outside, wearing his bomber jacket, hoping it would be enough to keep him warm, he stumbled towards the lot and collapsed onto the ripped out car seat that Johnny usually occupied.

It was as Dally was lying there, staring out at the world spinning around in circles around him, he realized why he’d come to the lot: he was hoping Johnny would find him. Which struck him as strange because if any of the other gang came around, he thought he might attack them. Not physically, but verbally. No one got to see Dallas Winston like this unless he wanted them to.

And for some reason, he wanted Johnny to and not even he could figure out why.

“Dallas?”

He couldn’t stop the grin that spread across his face. He knew that voice.

It was almost as though the universe had been reading his mind and decided to do what he asked just this once.

He rolled over on the ripped out car seat to see Johnny, still grinning and watched as Johnny’s expression went from politely confused to all out worried, his eyes widening and his jaw dropping slightly. He ran around the couch and knelt in front of Dallas. “What the hell happened?” he asked, reaching out to feel Dally’s forehead. “Oh shit, Dal, you’re burnin’ up. Are you sick?”

Dally couldn’t stop his own eyes widening slightly when Johnny cursed. He hardly ever swore. Like with himself being sick, he couldn’t even remember the last time it had happened. Vaguely, he realized that meant Johnny must be worried. Really worried.

“How long you been like this?” he heard Johnny ask softly.

Dallas swallowed, his throat dry as he said, “A few days. I’m okay, Johnnycake. Really.”

He tried to force a smile then, but it came out as more of a wince he rolled onto his side, coughing hard. He spat into the grass over the edge of the car seat. It looked brown, almost black. He tilted his head to one side, confused, wondering what it meant. Johnny saw it too and gasped. Dallas lay back against the car seat and winced. He was shaking badly. Even with his bomber jacket on and it being at least seventy degrees outside, he felt freezing cold.

Johnny stared at him, saying something, that Dallas couldn’t quite make out through the fog in his brain, but then he said, standing and starting to walk away, back towards the Curtis’ house, “I’m callin’ an ambulance, Dal. You need to go to the hospital.” And Dally heard that part just fine.

He sat up quickly and, reaching out towards Johnny, shouted, “No!”

Johnny stopped in his tracks and turned back to look at Dallas. He swallowed hard, his brows drawn together with concern more than frustration or anger. His hands were clenched into shaking fists. “Dally, you’re real sick. You probably have pneumonia. We can’t fix that. You know that.” He swallowed hard and added, “I’m sorry, Dal, but I gotta do this.” And he continued running towards the Curtis’ house, not slowing even when he reached their front porch.

Dally watched him until he went inside and then collapsed back onto the car seat, staring up at the sky through the branches and leaves of the tree he was lying under. Was he really that sick? Did he really need to go to the hospital? He sure didn’t feel like it. He just felt like he had a really bad hangover. And a chest cold. Could Johnny be right? Did he really have pneumonia?

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but what felt like a few minutes later, the gang was running back down the street and crowding around the car seat, looking at him. He frowned, rolling over and hiding his face. He hadn’t wanted them to see him like this too, but he didn’t hold it against Johnny. Not even a little bit. He couldn’t deal with this all by himself and he wondered why he’d thought for even a second he could.

“Shit, Dal.” This time it was Darry speaking. “You don’t look so good.”

“Fuck off, I’m fine,” he replied, still hiding his face.

“No, you ain’t fine,” Johnny was saying, sounding hysterical now. “Can’t you just admit that?”

Darry turned away and Dallas heard him speaking in low tones. He was probably trying to calm Johnny down and Dally wondered vaguely why Johnny was so worried to begin with. Did he think he was going to die or something? Even if he did have pneumonia, people didn’t die from it, did they?

A siren wailed in the distance and slowly came closer. Everyone turned as it became so loud Dallas covered his ears, trying to drown out the sound and keep his head from splitting in two. He heard more low voices and then someone was prying his hands off his ears, pulling his bomber jacket away from his face. He opened his eyes he hadn’t even realized he’d closed and saw the unfamiliar faces of a man and woman in paramedic gear in front of him.

“I need to listen to your chest,” the woman was saying, pulling a stethoscope out from seemingly nowhere. “Your friends think you got a lung illness.”

 _Yeah, it’s called pneumonia,_ he thought, but was too weak to say.

Instead, he rolled onto his back and nodded.

The cool metal of the stethoscope made him recoil at first, but he did what the woman asked, taking deep breaths, sitting up so she could listen from his back as well. When she finished, she looked nervous and said, “You’re coming with us. Your lungs don’t sound good. How long have you been feeling this way?”

“A few days,” Dally repeated, wondering how many more times he would say that today.

The paramedics looked at each other and the woman said, “You should’ve gone to the doctor a long time ago. Pneumonia can be deadly without treatment.”

As the paramedics helped him to stand then helped him into the ambulance, Dally glanced over at Johnny and saw him sitting on the ground, holding his head and rocking himself back and forth. Darry was sitting in front of him, trying to talk to him. Dally swallowed hard, feeling more guilty for making Johnny feel this way than for not going to the doctor when he should have.

The drive to the hospital was uneventful. The sirens were off now and, even though he was perfectly fine not being strapped into the gurney, they insisted on doing so. Once they arrived, the paramedics rolled him into a hospital room, gave him an IV, and told him he’d be here until his symptoms went away.

“Which shouldn’t be very long,” the nurse was saying as she hooked his IV up to a bag of fluid that he guessed were antibiotics. “Only a day or two. Pneumonia is very treatable. It just gets really bad when you don’t treat it at all.”

Dally had only been in the hospital for a few minutes and he hated it already.

It wasn’t much longer later that the gang arrived, all looking worried and relieved at the same time. They clearly had spoken to the doctor who had told them exactly what the nurse had just told him. Johnny’s face was tear-stained and his hands were still shaking badly, but he looked better than he had when Dallas had gotten into the ambulance.

“You feelin’ okay, Dal?” Darry asked.

Dally shrugged one shoulder. “I guess. I’m just glad I ain’t gonna be stuck here long.”

Everyone nodded and sat around his bed until the nurse told them to leave. Then they all waved goodbye and left. It wasn’t until Steve had shut the door behind them that Dally realized the only one who hadn’t followed them out the door and somehow had gotten away with staying behind was Johnny, hiding in the corner.

Dally watched as he came out of his corner and sat in the chair to the right of Dally’s bed. He still looked worried and his hands still shook. Dally opened his mouth to crack a joke, point out something funny about the hospital, anything to make that frightened, sad look on his face go away. But Johnny beat him to anything and said, not looking at him, “Please take care of yourself, Dallas.”

Of all the things Johnny could’ve said, this was not what Dally was expecting. He swallowed hard and said, “I do take care of myself, Johnnycake. You ain’t gotta worry about me, okay?”

This time Johnny did look at him and he said, “But that’s the thing, Dal. You _don’t_ take care of yourself. You let yourself get hurt and don’t bandage the wounds. You let yourself get sick and don’t even go to the doctor when it could be serious.” He paused to look away and Dally watched his throat move as he swallowed hard again. “I need you to take care of yourself, okay? I don’t...I don’t think you know what would happen to me without you.”

Dallas didn’t reply. He wasn’t really sure how to. Instead he reached out and took Johnny’s hand and when Johnny looked at him again, he said, “I’ll do better, Johnnycake. I promise. You just gotta take care of yourself too, okay?”

This time Johnny gave him the smallest of smiles and nodded.

Dallas scooted to one side then, grinning, and patted the empty space on the bed beside him, saying, “C’mon. You might as well make yourself comfortable.”

Johnny’s eyes widened slightly. “What if the nurse comes in?” he asked in a whisper.

Dallas shrugged one shoulder. “Then you can hide under the blankets or somethin’. I ain’t lettin’ her make my entire hospital stay awful.”

The small smile returned and Johnny kicked off his shoes before crawling into bed beside Dallas, curling close to him. Dally wrapped an arm around him, smiling as well, closing his eyes.

Maybe staying in the hospital wouldn’t be so bad. After all, it was only for a couple days.

**Author's Note:**

> i keep moving around and then getting rly anxious over crap, so i'm hoping that i'll have the next part of my big fic up tomorrow, but i guess we'll see rip


End file.
